


the red sky at dawn

by provocation



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Brokeback Mountain Fusion, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation
Summary: "Friend, that's more words than you've spoken in the past two weeks.""Hell, that's the most I've spoken in a year."(Brokeback Mountain AU but without (most of) the sadness!)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 3
Kudos: 93
Collections: Bounce A Coin Bingo





	the red sky at dawn

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a simple being i see a ship that has a dramatic break-up scene on a mountain and i think about sad cowboys (2005)
> 
> For those of you that might be worried, this doesn't contain any of the major homophobic themes found in the movie! There are some suggestions but nothing explicit like in canon; I mostly chose to leave it out so that I could focus on the prompt of 'virginity' for my bingo card.
> 
> Thanks to my beta and friend [juwude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juwude/pseuds/juwude) for letting me throw around ideas for this one with you! I appreciate you immensely and I'm so happy to have you in #geraskier-hell with me.
> 
> Title is a line from Her Sweet Kiss 😔😬 I hope you enjoy, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

WEEK SEVEN.

The days are longer up here than back in town, which is just one of a dozen impossible facts proving that the mountain is magical. The cleaner air makes sense as they’re a far cry from any sort of industrial pollution, but that doesn’t explain how Jaskier’s head feels clearer too. Every new morning on the mountain finds him more lucid than the night before, desires sharpened and dreams within reach.

In the last two months, Jaskier has grown used to falling asleep to the orchestra of cicadas and crickets. He doesn’t miss the nighttime traffic that used to rouse him in the middle of the night, nor the passing sirens that would steal his attention away. Up here, the only sounds of danger he ever hears are distant bleating from the flock, or Geralt shaking him awake to tell him about coyotes.

Even that doesn’t seem so bad, really. Not to him anyway. Geralt seems to take every loss of an animal as a personal failure, and Jaskier has caught him grieving for the missing sheep with more heaviness in his posture than some mourners. It’s times like those that make Jaskier wonder if Geralt’s ever lost anyone before, anyone real.

Right now death seems very far from either of them; Jaskier has snuck away from the base camp to deliver Geralt a message from home. He hadn’t opened the letter, although he’d been dreadfully tempted by the name written on the corner of the envelope in pretty handwriting. What kind of a name is Yenna de Vries?

He finds Geralt above a sort of plateau halfway up the green mountain, somehow keeping his footing as the sheep climb up to bother him.

From afar, he looks so little; the brim of his hat dwarfs his head and hair, and he’s wearing two layers of jackets with another tied around his waist. His hands are like a doll’s from here, barely visible around the long oak crook he’s holding tightly for support. Jaskier flushes with heat to think of all that those hands have done, and might still do.

Geralt doesn’t notice him yet, which might account for how awkwardly he tries to walk down to join the herd. His horse is tied up on the other side of the clearing, but clearly he’d wanted to scale higher to… get a better view of all the sheep at once? Or to try to reach even cleaner air, and sharpen his own desires?

The sun breaks through the clouds as the sheep rush to surround Geralt, flooding the moment with bright warmth that encompasses all without judgement and makes dirty wool glow with magic. When Geralt stands amidst the flock he reminds Jaskier of a shepherd from a holy book that neither of them have read. He looks close to God, standing upright on the steep hill with a cane to keep his balance. He is more sacred than anything else Jaskier has ever seen.

Then the sun moves through the clouds and Jaskier’s horse steps forward, tired of idling. Its hoof knocks a small flurry of gravel down the mountain and the tiny noise is enough to somehow catch Geralt’s attention. They aren’t close enough to make out the expressions on one another’s faces, but Jaskier still thrills at being seen by the man. He waves the letter high over his head, and Geralt walks down into the tall grass and starts to cross to approach him.

WEEK ONE.

It’s stupid to stand outside on a day like this, in the kind of heat where you could crack an egg on the hood of your car and enjoy breakfast a minute later. So it’d be easy to mistake the two young men approaching the empty office for stupid; one of them isn’t even wearing a hat, letting the 12’o’clock sunlight fall directly down against his scalp. But a job’s a job, and although the office might look abandoned, they both have the right address and they’re both there for the same reason.

The man in a hat is silent; the only indication he gives of his impatience is his thumb tapping out a frenetic and nervous rhythm against his hip. His company is more open about his anxiety that they might have been sent here on the wrong day, twitching as he glances back and forth between the closed door and the closed-off stranger.

Calling either of them _men_ is inaccurate when neither of them has reached 25 yet. One looks the part more than the other, with thin white-blonde hair that hangs down to his shoulders, but even the scars on his neck and cheek don’t make him look grown. The other has a decidedly more childish look to him, but his blue eyes and rosy skin are aged somewhat by the cigarette dangling between his lips.

The smoking man is the first to speak, courage stoked when he eventually catches wind of the other’s nervous tapping. He kneels and ashes the end of his cigarette on the pavement, returning it to his metal case of smokes and pocketing the whole box. Then he opens his lips to introduce himself—

Right as the door to the office finally unlocks. The young men stand up straight, looking more like soldiers at attention than prospective cowboys. The door swings open and their new employer eyes them carefully, gaze swinging up and down. “If the pair of you are looking for work,” he begins, as though he wasn’t the one who’d been running late, “I suggest you get your asses in here pronto.”

They might come from different parts of the continent but they both understand the meaning of the word _pronto_ , and head in without hesitation.

The man who owns the office is named Phillip Strenger, which they’d both known in advance. He explains the job to them— one of them will be situated at the base camp and they’ll meet up with Strenger once a week to pick up new groceries and supplies. The other one will sleep in a tent higher up the mountain with the herd of sheep— it’s made clear that they can share supper and breakfast together, but that someone needs to camp with the sheep to prevent the herd thinning out.

He asks them the cursory employment questions; if they know how to shoot, if they’re scared of wolves, if they know how to tie a good knot. Nothing about schooling or previous work or their families or themselves, which they’re both secretly grateful for.

They’re just as grateful for the coolness of Phillip Strenger’s air conditioning unit; it might be a ragged little machine that clatters like it’s asthmatic but it pumps out cold air into the office no problem. Both men relax, just a little. They continue to listen silently and obediently, nodding and shaking their heads at all the right parts until Strenger asks, “And what about your names?”

“Julek,” the boy with blue eyes offers instinctively, and then when this seems to annoy Strenger, “... Julian Alfred Pankratz. But I go by Jaskier, or D—”

“Jesus, just one name is fine,” the old man interrupts, irritated. “And you?”

The other young man says only, “Geralt.”

“Fine,” Strenger scrawls both the names down in his chicken scratch handwriting. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll drive you up to the drop-off. Fine?”

“Fine,” Jaskier echoes, and Geralt nods. Strenger doesn’t say another word, and half a minute of silence later, the boys realize this means that they’re dismissed.

WEEK FOUR.

They don’t talk much at night here. Well, Geralt isn’t much for talking ever, save the rare occasion when he opens up about whatever happened that day with the sheep. Initially Jaskier had been up with the herd and Geralt had been responsible for meeting with Strenger once a week, but after Jaskier had missed four shots in a row and Geralt had confessed how much he hated the mandatory social interaction with their slimy boss, the mutual decision was made to switch.

They still see a lot of each other during the day, but as soon as dinner is finished Geralt climbs up out of his seat and back onto his horse, leaving Jaskier alone and cold. He wishes that he could light a fire, but that’s another one of Phillip Strenger’s stupid rules so that the Forest Service doesn’t come break down his nearly-illegal farming operation. No fires.

Tonight, they crowd around the space where a campfire should be, enjoying the company. Save a few mentions of his brothers, Geralt doesn’t talk about his personal life ever. And as eager as Jaskier is to talk, he doesn’t like discussing the family in Lettenhove he left behind either. Getting into that would mean getting into why they’d kicked him out, and he’s been so enjoying forging an awkward friendship with Geralt over hunting and shepherding and learning to enjoy the starlight and clean mountain air together.

Tonight, Strenger was kind (or stupid) enough to include a bottle of brown liquor in the bags of supplies. It isn’t enough to get both of them hammered, and Jaskier is of the opinion that Geralt is the one who deserves to get wasted. So he pours one tall drink for himself and nurses it the whole night as Geralt forgoes a mug and drains the bottle itself.

They finish dinner, and Geralt doesn’t get up and leave. The last orange remnants of warm sunlight fade into dark, beautiful, crisp night, and they take all the heat with them as they disappear. And Geralt still doesn’t get up and leave.

Jaskier stares at Geralt, thinking about the other day when they’d found a stream of spring water and bathed at the same time. Thinking about how those sharp yellow eyes had looked away as Jaskier soaped himself up, rubbing up and down his arms and legs to try to make himself presentable. Thinking about how Geralt doesn’t wear any underwear under those jeans.

“It’s cold,” Geralt seems to only now realize. He sounds more sober than Jaskier expects; he drops the nearly-empty bottle down on the ground beside him. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it back up to the herd tonight.”

“You’re drunk,” Jaskier accuses, delighted by the prospect and terrified by the implication (and delighted by the implication).

“I’m not,” and Geralt turns to stare at him with those golden eyes again. Jaskier swallows a mouthful of dry air. “I just don’t feel like walking all the way up that mountain again… it’s too cold, and my horse is asleep for the night already.”

Jaskier glances over at where their horses are tied up, and sees both steeds wide awake, eyes open as they watch the pair. He swallows again. “Your horse, Roach.”

“That’s right,” Geralt smiles, a rare occurrence. His teeth are as sharp as his eyes; Jaskier can barely see them in the moonlight. “If you’ve got an extra blanket, I’ll just camp out here and ride out at first light.”

“An extra blanket?” Jaskier stands and walks inside his tent. He can feel Geralt’s eyes on him the whole time. When he returns to hand Geralt the thick scratchy blanket, he’s sure it won’t be enough but Geralt takes it anyway. “I— You’re going to freeze your balls off out here with no shelter. You’d be better off sleeping in the tent.”

“I’ll be fine,” Geralt tells him, unfolding the blanket and settling down next to his bottle. He really does seem like he’s going to bed, so Jaskier barely hesitates before going inside his own tent and trying to will himself to sleep.

Unsurprisingly, he fails. The ground seems colder and harder today than usual, but every moment of discomfort only serves to remind Jaskier that Geralt is doing worse, outside with no walls around him at all. It’s romantic in theory, but in practice, Jaskier is going to wake up with two jobs tomorrow and no company.

It’s hard to keep track of time but he thinks the last straw comes more than an hour later, when he realizes exactly what the clicking noise is. Those are Geralt’s teeth chattering inside his mouth— fuck, he must be freezing. Jaskier stands up before he knows what he’s going to do, and then once he has, his resolve is settled. He marches to the entrance to the tent and throws it open.

“Get in here before you die,” he orders imperiously. Geralt lies still for only a second before obeying, climbing to his feet and carrying his blanket around him like a child. Jaskier closes the tent flap safely again and finally Geralt goes quiet, although he’s still shivering.

“Lie down,” Jaskier instructs. “The bedroll’s big enough for both of us.”

It isn’t, not really, but neither of them put up a fuss. Geralt lies down in the spot Jaskier had been laying in, which leaves a space between him and the wall for Jaskier to squeeze himself into. He’s careful not to lean against Geralt at all, as much as he wants to; he’d rather roll the tent over than have his companion hate him for the rest of the summer because he made some unrequited move.

Now silence takes over, and all they can hear are cicadas somewhere and the horses quietly snoring. Jaskier faces the wall of the tent, all too aware that Geralt is facing his back. Even if the other man isn’t shivering anymore Jaskier can still feel his breath, hot against the back of his neck and head. It’s… nice, if a little…

He doesn’t know how to put it. His chest rises and falls, and he feels himself starting to sink into sleep finally. Just before he can lose consciousness, a gentle touch wakes him; there’s a hand on his forearm, light and unobtrusive.

Jaskier opens his eyes, and holds his breath. The hand slips down across his hand, brushing over his knuckles to rest just as gently on his hip.

“Geralt,” he whispers, half a question, half an invitation. His heart is pounding so loudly he thinks the whole mountain could probably hear it. Jaskier doesn’t move, not even when the hand moves over his hip and comes to land firmly on his groin.

The tent is silent, and Jaskier’s head should be buzzing with questions but he can’t think of a single one worth asking. He stays perfectly still, lips parted as he does his best to breathe unobtrusively. Maybe, just maybe, if he shuts the fuck up and doesn’t move a muscle, whatever heaven he’s entered will continue.

Geralt strokes him bluntly, imperfectly, perfectly. Jaskier exhales— he doesn’t mean to, but he can hardly control himself. Geralt rumbles against the back of his neck, “Jaskier,” and Jaskier’s pulse jumps in his hand.

It’s the first time Geralt has ever said his name.

Suddenly the fabric stretched across his body is too much. He twists under the blanket, thinking of getting out of his pants; Geralt mistakes the urge and leans in to kiss him, which is just as good. Even better. Jaskier has never kissed a man before, and now he sees that his previous experiences had just been facsimiles of the real thing. 

Heat rushes through him as their mouths meet, again and again. Geralt slides his tongue between Jaskier’s lips and Jaskier licks back, eager and wanting. Then Geralt bites his tongue— not hard enough to hurt, just drags his teeth along it enough to make Jaskier gasp hard, and suddenly their clothing is a great obstruction.

Geralt seems to agree, and as Jaskier pulls away so that he can unbuckle his belt and shove his pants off, Geralt lifts his hips up from the bedroll to do the same. His cock springs out from his jeans and Jaskier can barely see it in the low light but he knows it’s bigger than his own. He thinks that he probably shouldn’t feel as excited as he does about it.

“Can I,” Jaskier says, and Geralt doesn’t let him find an end to the question before reaching for him. Their hands find each other, and as Jaskier takes Geralt into hand he experiences the newness of being held. The fist around his cock is careful at first, but soon they start to move in some kind of rhythm, and Jaskier is unable to control the little gasps he’s making.

He bites his lip as he strokes Geralt, trying to be quiet, but there’s no use— Geralt leans in and kisses him as he squeezes around his cock, and then mutters against his mouth, breath hot and voice low, “I want to hear you, Jask, I wanna— there’s no one else here. I wanna hear it.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier cries, as Geralt does some particularly clever thing where he twists his fingers around the head of his dick. “Fuck, fuck, aah— we’re still on, we’re still— We’re outside!”

“We’re inside,” Geralt says. Jaskier wraps both his hands around Geralt’s thick cock, and he grunts, rolling his hips up into the touch. Precome spurts out of him, and Jaskier takes the opportunity to smear it across Geralt’s length and make the motion smoother. Geralt groans and leans forward to bite Jaskier’s neck, and Jaskier can’t help himself. He whimpers, moaning so loudly that anyone else passing by could definitely hear it.

But there’s no one else here; Geralt said it, and Jaskier knows it’s true. He feels himself flush with embarrassed heat at the sound of his own moaning, but despite that, he can’t bring himself to shut up. Not when Geralt is so hard against him. Not when this talented, beautiful man is wringing the noises out of him like he’s done this a hundred times before. Like he does this for a living.

“T-talk to me,” Jaskier begs, arching forward into Geralt with every touch, bringing him off at the same frenzied pace. “Just say— say anything.”

“I’ve wanted this since the first fucking moment I saw you,” Geralt tells him without hesitation. “I saw you smoking that cigarette outside Strenger’s office and I wanted— I saw your mouth and I, and I wanted—“

“You can,” Jaskier encourages him. “You… I’ll— I’ll suck you off. Never done it before, but I’m a quick learner.”

“God,” and now Geralt is the one moaning, practically keening into Jaskier’s hands. “You’re so… you feel so fucking good, you’re better than— gh. Do that again.”

“This?” Jaskier laughs, breathless and excited, and reaches back to press Geralt’s balls. “Not so cold now, are you?”

Geralt leans in to kiss him, probably so that he can stop Jaskier from having any further conversation with his balls. It turns out one more kiss is all it takes, and before Jaskier can warn Geralt he’s coming all over the other cowboy’s hand and both of their chests. Geralt growls, low and animal, and then a quick stroke later he comes too.

They lie there, almost too close for comfort, bodies overlapping on the bedroll. Jaskier is half on top of Geralt but he can’t bring himself to get off (ha-ha), softening and trying to make sense of the impossible thing that just happened. Had they really just done that? Had it really ended so fast— and is he ever going to experience something like that again?

Geralt opens his mouth as if to say something, and Jaskier shakes his head. “I know what you’re going to say,” he accuses, suddenly terrified. Terrified and delighted, again. He feels more naked than he is. “But I’m going to need a cigarette before I go down on you.”

Geralt’s eyes widen in surprise. Then he smiles, soft and slow and happy. It’s a smile Jaskier will remember perfectly until his dying day.

They end up finishing the whole pack of cigarettes that night.


End file.
